


Assault on a Brownstone

by LyraNgalia



Series: The Montenegrin Affair [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-02
Updated: 2012-12-02
Packaged: 2017-11-20 01:43:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/579928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyraNgalia/pseuds/LyraNgalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The late Irene Adler finds an unexpected visitor in her new home in Manhattan. Takes place many years before <i><a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/579927">In The Best Families</a></i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Assault on a Brownstone

The boy was five years old when Irene Adler finally chose to settle into a Fifth Avenue apartment in Manhattan. The prospect of staying in one city, in one home, again, settled uneasily on her mind. She'd grown used to the restless nature of life after her death, and even with the boy, she'd moved. Leaving scandal and misbehaviour behind in a merry trail. Part of it had been necessity, had been the relentless move of the dead for fear of staying in a place too long, of being recognized and caught in Moriarty's web again.

Even the knowledge that Mycroft Holmes, after his initial shock at her continued existence and that of the boy, would have extended the British Government's protection to the mother of his nephew had not stopped her from moving. Because the moves, the misbehaviour and the scandals that led to the moves, were not only about safety and protection, but had become part of the game she and Sherlock Holmes played. She skipped unpredictably around the world while he chased her trail from London. And when the tension grew too much, or law enforcement came too close, he would appear in whatever far-flung city she found herself or she'd appear in the flat on Baker Street.

It, like everything else between them, was a game, and one that Irene enjoyed too much to give up easily, child or no.

But it soon became apparent to everyone involved that his mother's discipline was the only thing that kept young Nero Arthur Adler in any semblance of a line, and Irene's initial plan of enrolling him in boarding school while she continued jumping about the world evaporated like morning fog.

Which explained the Fifth Avenue apartment, with its location near a private school for gifted children. It was simple self-preservation, Irene contended. That the boy was utterly incapable of pretending to fit in, and any misbehavior on his part would be a signal flare to her continued existence to people whom she would rather remained ignorant. The only way to keep herself hidden was to ensure he behaved (at least by her standards of behavior).

Self-preservation, and certainly not any sort of sentiment towards the boy who was the product of another one of the endless games between the Consulting Detective and the Woman.

Irene had expected two and a half months of anonymity before the British government found her new residence. It only took six weeks before the footman to the building was replaced by a man with the obvious discipline of a former serviceman. Irene had been suspicious, aware of the possibility that she'd been discovered by a strand of Moriarty's network, until the new footman had presented the boy with a plastic toy dinosaur and addressed her as Mistress in a negligent drawl.

Six weeks. Mycroft Holmes was getting better.

Another two weeks passed, and Irene found more signs of the British government's hand in her day-to-day life. The crossing guard in front of the school. The librarian. The new cashier at the corner store halfway between the school and the apartment.

It was comforting, almost, and any irritation she felt at the unasked for surveillance was tempered by her expectation of seeing how long it would take Nero to figure out who was watching them.

It was a Thursday, and Irene was returning from having walked the boy to school. The footman nodded politely as she entered, but did not give any sign that anything was unusual. The moment she walked into the apartment, though, Irene knew something wasn't right.

The temperature was cooler than it should have been, and a faint acrid scent clung to the air. Irene glanced up at the ceiling, then the doorway. Nothing seemed out of place, but she reached into her pocket, drawing out the small derringer she carried routinely. She kept the gun at her side, half-hidden, as she began taking soft steps down the hallway.

A whisper of curtains. The window in the living room had been left open. She raised the gun, gripping one hand with the other to steady it, and stepped into the doorway.

"The riding crop suited you better."

Sherlock Holmes sat in one of the two armchairs in the room, facing the doorway, his fingers steepled and looking calculatedly bored.

"When in Rome," she answered, lowering the gun slowly, slipping it back into her pocket, her expression falling into a familiar one of cool amusement. Her eyes swept over him for a moment, taking in the touch of red in his hair, a smudge of it near his temple, the trace of temporary hair dye, the rumpled clothes. A smile tugged at her lips as her gaze returned to him, and caught him doing the same to her.

Irene stepped out of the doorway and into the living room, ducking around an elaborate tower of tinker toys. She headed for the window, speaking over her shoulder, "Two months. You're getting slow, Mr. Holmes. It only took your brother six weeks to send security."

He scoffed, and she heard the soft squeak of springs as he rose from the armchair. She kept her attention on the window as his steps grew closer. "Who do you think pointed him to America?" came the disdainful answer. "He was still convinced you were in Sydney before then."

She didn't turn towards him even though she could feel him close, the radiant heat of his body behind her and to her left. She reached instead to close the window. "I can't imagine where he got that idea."

His hand rested on hers on the window frame, stopping her from closing it. It was the only point of physical contact between them, but for them, it was an intimacy, a concession to touch for him, a willingness to stop for her.

An idle observer would no doubt have considered it a product of long interaction, a sign of two people so comfortable in each other's presence that words are unnecessary, but for them that was too sentimental, too _easy_ an answer. They were too alike, each of them too much too obviously themselves, too conscious of the minute things that give people and what they liked away, to fall into such patterns.

It's enough, and she stopped, still looking out the window. His voice would have sounded flat, emotionless to anyone else's ear, but he knew she would hear the touch of amusement in it. "Certainly couldn't have been the plane ticket some mysterious benefactor sent to my mobile with a stolen credit card."

Her lips twitched in a silent smile. "So he has the ability to track those. I always wondered." Irene stared out the window for a few more moments; the view is growing familiar, the busy street, the picturesque trees. She judged the distance between the nearest tree and the window. "Up the tree on the right, along the moulding, and through the window?" she guessed.

He laughed, and the sound made her turn away from the window to face him. "Through the attic and down the inside," he answered smugly. A beat, and the self-satisfied smile fell away, back to the stoic seriousness he wore as easily as the coat. "It's a flaw in Mycroft's security."

Her lips thinned in momentary irritation at being wrong, at being fooled by his, now obvious, misdirection. "Is that why you're here? To expose the flaws in your brother's surveillance?"

She knows it's more than that. That he is here because he is concerned that she's stopped moving, that had been obvious by his admission that he'd pointed Mycroft Holmes and his considerable resources to New York City. That he had roused himself out of the comforts of Baker Street to come to Manhattan, to find what holes still existed in her security. He came out of concern and sentiment, but she knew he would never admit it.

Just like how he had refused when she'd begged for protection and still arrived in Karachi. It was just another part of the game they played with each other.

"He has been insufferable lately. This'll cure him of it," he scoffed. She smiled at that, the script is still the same even as he lingered close enough for her to feel his radiant body heat. There was no reason to stand, no reason to touch or be this close. He could have been just as archly detached from the armchair, but here he was, with a precise amount of space between them, but close enough to touch.

He knew she could, _would_ read the space between his words and come to the conclusion that gave lie to the familiar script. It was how they communicated best, in the clues other people would never think to read, in the sending of a text and the touch of a pulse. It was what made them utterly extraordinary, what drew them together time and again despite their mutual refusal to lose to the other.

"He'll be disappointed you didn't stay," she said, nodding towards the tower of toys on the ground. The boy, the child that had resulted from one of their endless challenges, the reason why Mycroft Holmes now knew she was still alive. The boy who was equal parts his mother and his father, who was utterly extraordinary and utterly intractable because of it. And it too was a question, of whether or not he _would_ stay. They never did, for very long, but a day, two, wasn't unheard of.

He raised an eyebrow, giving her a skeptical look. "Disappointment would require him to realize I had been here in the first place," he pointed out.

A smile tugged at the corner of her lips. "You had a cigarette before you came through the attic," she retorted. "Maybe two. He'll notice and come to the right conclusion. Nobody else would dare smoke here."

Her answer surprised him. She saw the passage of it followed by growing interest in his expression as his eyes flickered over to the pile of toys. "Could've been the man who does maintenance. Stains on his fingers, longtime smoker."

"Quit two weeks ago," she countered. His hand still held hers against the windowsill, but she took a step into the space between them, a smile tugging at her lips and a familiar tension settling under her skin. "Been leaving the wrappers of nicotine patches all over the halls. The boy's counted eight per day, so far."

He didn't step back, because to step back was to lose, to admit her proximity meant _something_ , but neither did he step forward, because to meet her was also to lose, to give her what she wanted. So he remained exactly where he was, the space between them tiny and precise and warm with radiant body heat. But he's certain she can read other signs, the smile threatening to tug at his lips, the way he's certain his eyes are dilating as he flips through his thoughts and realize that she's _right_.

It's enough, though, for them, the touch of a warm hand, and the prospect of a puzzle, of intellectual stimulation and combative disagreement.

"The next direct flight to London leaves tomorrow morning," he said. It hadn't been what he'd meant to say, but she does this to him, pulls words and desires and _sentiment_ out of him despite himself and with such seeming ease he cannot help but want to do the same to her, to unbalance her as much as she unbalances him. He shook his head and stepped back towards the armchair, letting go of her hand.

She followed, taking the chair across from him, curling her legs beneath her. It is a concession to follow, to let him lead, but he has already given in by answering as she had already given in by asking. She smiles, and it is, as it has always been, The Woman's smile. Razor sharp and challenging, though by now touched with an affection neither has, or will ever, voice. But this is how they are, how they will always be. Full of unspoken words and seemingly inconsequential gestures.

"Plenty of time for you to tell me about my neighbors, I expect."


End file.
